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The SEC stranglehold on the hearts and minds

First, let me just get this out of the way so there is no misunderstanding: I feel as though Alabama has been on an amazing run and deserve their place among the great college football dynasty programs. And, it is reasonable to argue the SEC has been college football's best conference for a while now.

With that said, and assuming these things to be true, it is the basis of something very annoying that has happened to my favorite sport. These assumptions have been the basis of artificially raising the SEC to a level far beyond reality - and it is extremely frustrating. ESPN has taken these things and combined them with their own financial interests and artifically pumped up the league to a point where it bends opinions and often leaves a boring college football playoff situation.

Bowl games and head to head results prove year after year that the Power 5 conferences all ebb and flow but in general are very close to one another. There just isn't a big enough difference to discount ANY of them. Yet the ESPN propaganda parade injects an eternal "sec sec sec" whisper in everyone's ears, resulting in a never ending cycle where SEC teams start the season out with artificially high rankings, play a limited number of noncon games against other Power 5 foes, play only 8 conference games, and ensure that even conference losses do not hurt their standing much because they are often against "ranked teams"

Just today ESPN announced their "too early" rankings for the 2019 season. You guessed it: 2 of the top 4 and 5 of the top 10 are SEC schools, right after yet another bowl season hinted at far more parity than that among the Power 5.

We spent years of BCS where the two team tournament basically boiled down to half the bracket being the SEC and the other half of the bracket being the rest of the country, combined. The final slap in the face was the year they managed to pit two SEC teams against each other in the championship. After a brief tilt toward common sense when the 4 team playoff began, we again now see situations where half the field is SEC teams and this year we had what became a 3 loss non-conference winning Georgia team slotted ahead of a one loss Power 5 conference champion in the form of Ohio State.

This is why I have become a broken record: I don't care how many teams you put into a playoff, but please please please make ONE stipulation: anyone in the playoff must be a conference champion (yes, Notre Dame - just join a conference already). Outside of perhaps some unfair seeding, it would totally remove ESPN and much OPINION from determining a champion. Get as much opinion out of it as possible because things like ESPN are unfairly tilting opinion.

It'll never happen, but what we are seeing with the SEC right now is why I wish pre-season rankings would be eliminated. They always start with a large number of teams high in the rankings which creates a ton of inertia against the conference as a whole falling down the board. They'd need to lose some bad non-conference games which is unlikely for the conference as a whole to drop in any given season, and what ends up happening is the losses the top teams take are deemed "quality losses"

The whole things ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and could likely be fixed by no rankings till after weeks 3 or 4 when we've seen every team play at least 2-3 games and could start making assessments on where teams actually stand.

It'll never happen, but what we are seeing with the SEC right now is why I wish pre-season rankings would be eliminated. They always start with a large number of teams high in the rankings which creates a ton of inertia against the conference as a whole falling down the board. They'd need to lose some bad non-conference games which is unlikely for the conference as a whole to drop in any given season, and what ends up happening is the losses the top teams take are deemed "quality losses"

The whole things ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and could likely be fixed by no rankings till after weeks 3 or 4 when we've seen every team play at least 2-3 games and could start making assessments on where teams actually stand.

It'll never happen, but what we are seeing with the SEC right now is why I wish pre-season rankings would be eliminated. They always start with a large number of teams high in the rankings which creates a ton of inertia against the conference as a whole falling down the board. They'd need to lose some bad non-conference games which is unlikely for the conference as a whole to drop in any given season, and what ends up happening is the losses the top teams take are deemed "quality losses"

The whole things ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, and could likely be fixed by no rankings till after weeks 3 or 4 when we've seen every team play at least 2-3 games and could start making assessments on where teams actually stand.

The BCS Committee does not meet until October, so the preseason rankings have been sorted out. Non-issue.

AP Rankings go the whole season, including preseason, and based on what we've seen they have at least some impact on where people end up ranked as the season goes on including the playoff committee.

Very minimally, if it all. By the time the playoff field is announced things have sorted themselves out.

P5 Team with no losses? In. After that just sorting through the 1 loss teams based on the criteria (Champions of league, division, SOS, best wins, worse losses), not that hard. Again preseason ranking, non-issue. Just my opinion, man.

Notre Dame, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, ACC - Teams from the P5 all should play one inter-conference game during the season. It doesn't matter who as long as they are from another conference. Then, maybe then we have a measurement yard stick early in the season.

First, let me just get this out of the way so there is no misunderstanding: I feel as though Alabama has been on an amazing run and deserve their place among the great college football dynasty programs. And, it is reasonable to argue the SEC has been college football's best conference for a while now.

With that said, and assuming these things to be true, it is the basis of something very annoying that has happened to my favorite sport. These assumptions have been the basis of artificially raising the SEC to a level far beyond reality - and it is extremely frustrating. ESPN has taken these things and combined them with their own financial interests and artifically pumped up the league to a point where it bends opinions and often leaves a boring college football playoff situation.

Bowl games and head to head results prove year after year that the Power 5 conferences all ebb and flow but in general are very close to one another. There just isn't a big enough difference to discount ANY of them. Yet the ESPN propaganda parade injects an eternal "sec sec sec" whisper in everyone's ears, resulting in a never ending cycle where SEC teams start the season out with artificially high rankings, play a limited number of noncon games against other Power 5 foes, play only 8 conference games, and ensure that even conference losses do not hurt their standing much because they are often against "ranked teams"

Just today ESPN announced their "too early" rankings for the 2019 season. You guessed it: 2 of the top 4 and 5 of the top 10 are SEC schools, right after yet another bowl season hinted at far more parity than that among the Power 5.

We spent years of BCS where the two team tournament basically boiled down to half the bracket being the SEC and the other half of the bracket being the rest of the country, combined. The final slap in the face was the year they managed to pit two SEC teams against each other in the championship. After a brief tilt toward common sense when the 4 team playoff began, we again now see situations where half the field is SEC teams and this year we had what became a 3 loss non-conference winning Georgia team slotted ahead of a one loss Power 5 conference champion in the form of Ohio State.

This is why I have become a broken record: I don't care how many teams you put into a playoff, but please please please make ONE stipulation: anyone in the playoff must be a conference champion (yes, Notre Dame - just join a conference already). Outside of perhaps some unfair seeding, it would totally remove ESPN and much OPINION from determining a champion. Get as much opinion out of it as possible because things like ESPN are unfairly tilting opinion.

A central pillar of the SEC argument is they get the best recruits ergo the best teams must follow. Of course, there is some moderately convincing evidence that some recruiting hotbeds are overrated (down south) while others are underrated (up north) based on NFL draftees, etc.

Clemson won national titles in 2016 and 2018. Their recruiting class rankings sort of upset that apple cart at least a little bit.

Connelly blends Rivals and 247 rankings to give Clemson a slightly higher 5 yr ranking of 9th. Bama of course was #1, Georgia #2, Ohio State #3, Florida State #4, USC #5. This tells me Clemson has overachieved their rankings by a fair amount, others have grossly underachieved, and Rivals apparently thought more of Clemson than the 247 composite.